1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of providing a virtual interactive experience of viewing an image and, more particularly, to inserting a high resolution image into a low resolution interactive image to produce a realistic immersive experience.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Technology for providing a totally immersive experience is becoming increasingly prevalent. A number of alternative methods are known. One proposal is promoted by Apple Computer and is represented by U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,583. A user of the products of this technology is surrounded by a cylindrical representation or view as if they were standing at the center of the cylinder. The user can look anywhere around a 360 degree representation by controlling their viewing through a user input such as a mouse or joystick. They cannot look straight up or down but can look all around themselves. A related experience is provided by Microsoft Surround technology. Still others patch together a collection of still flat images into a whole image, for example, in the form of the patchwork or a buckey ball carbon 12 molecule or a soccer ball.
Another totally immersive experience is described by Omniview's U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,667. This patent describes the capture of a hemispherical image by using a fisheye lens. Further improvements to the technology are described by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,359,363 and 5,384,588 and by U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 08/339,663, 08/386,912, 08/494,599 and 08/516,629. The improvements describe an immersive experience provided by joining two or more hemispherical images together as a sphere or "bubble" and, further, permitting travel through several such spherical representations by "tweening." For example, a user can be guided to move through a museum tour, look backwards and forwards, to their right, left, up or down and follow the tour, for example, through a space technology museum, pausing to listen or view special presentations by actuating "hot spots" or buttons that are visually provided the user as the user is conducted on their tour.
Generally, these technologies involve interactive computer photography based upon digital input to the computer processor of photographic images obtained using standard, wide angle or fisheye lenses or mirrors to reflect a wide angle image into a standard lens. After initial processing of the digitized images to join them together, the technologies further permit the user to interactively select viewing angles for viewing the digitized and processed image and magnification (or zoom) values to view selected portions in detail. The digital processing involves removing any mirror, wide angle or fisheye lens distortion and providing a perspective-corrected image portion for viewing at the user's command.
While these methods differ in coverage and approach, they all limit the amount of magnification available due to image resolution limitations, for example, because the file size for the digital interactive image is likewise limited due to memory or transmission constraints. Consequently, there remains a need in the art to further enhance the resolution of interactive images or image portions so that magnification and zoom features can be enjoyed by users and, thus, an object of the present invention is to permit selective high resolution image insertion into the viewed image portion of an interactive image.